Intratrophic predation in simple predator-prey models

✍ Scribed by Jonathon Pitchford; John Brindley

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 168 KB
• Volume: 60
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1522-9602
• DOI: 10.1006/bulm.1998.0053

✦ Synopsis

Intratrophic predation is a phenomenon not usually considered in mathematical models of biological populations, and yet it may occur in any model where many species are considered as a single model variable. This paper demonstrates how intratrophic predation can be rationally included in a general predator-prey model, and shows that the resulting model has some desirable and intuitively plausible features. A simple asymptotic method is developed in order to investigate how intratrophic predation can affect both the position and stability of the equilibria of a model. The methods can be applied to wide classes of population models, and the conclusions drawn are of practical importance.